Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Floor mats and especially exercise mats are used on daily basis by multitude of individuals throughout the course of the day, so they become contaminated with bodily fluids containing germs, viruses, and bacteria excreted by the individuals using the exercise mats. The mats also become heavily soiled with dead skin and dirt form the floor. Current common practice in the yoga or exercise studios is to spray the mat with some strong antimicrobial chemical and wipe it with a cloth or leave the mat to air-dry. In some places the mats are simply folded and stored without cleaning. There is a need for an automated device that will easily clean the mat within a reasonable short amount of time (within few minutes).
In the known devices for cleaning floor or exercise mats, the mat is sprayed with a cleaning solution or it passes through a bath of cleaning solution, and then a set of rolling scrubbers or brushes clean the mat from one or both sides. However, none of the known cleaning devices provides a unit of scrubbers and/or brushes that are arranged in an independent compact module that could be easily replaced or refreshed after a number of cleaning cycles or for maintenance purposes. In the known cleaning devices each of the scrubbers and/or brushes are individual components so for maintenance purposes a specialized (skilled) technician needs to open the device, remove each of the individual components and assemble new individual components.